Wired:
On a recent Wednesday night the crowd spilled out the door at
San Francisco's Axis Café, where the draw wasn't a hot
band or a talented bartender, but a lecture. On physics.Toby
Garfield, an oceanographer at San Francisco State University,
was explaining the science of big ocean waves, like the giant
Mavericks surf break about 25 miles away. As he showed slides
of the ocean floor and explained that the coast is a system of
energy dissipation, the crowd peppered him with questions. Why
do waves come in sets? What are rogue waves? How is the United
States harnessing the power of waves to make renewable
energy?Scenes like this are being repeated across the country
at science cafes, where contemporary science -- a topic that
Americans supposedly find dull -- is drawing substantial crowds
month after month, even on topics as nerdy as gene sequencing
and dark matter.
